The nanoimprinting technique has recently attracted attention as a microprocessing technique. The nanoimprinting technique is a pattern forming technique that uses a mold member (mold) obtained by forming a fine concave and convex pattern on the surface of a base material and that performs equivalent transferring of the fine concave and convex pattern by transferring the fine concave and convex pattern to the material to be processed (Patent Document 1).
In such nanoimprinting technique, a mold is typically pressed against a fluidity resin, the resin is cured in this state, and the mold is then separated from the cured resin, thereby forming a fine concave and convex pattern structure having a fine concave and convex pattern. The fine concave and convex pattern structure having a fine concave and convex pattern (for example, a pillar-shaped or a line-and-space-shaped resin pattern) that is thus formed is directly used as a nano-pillar array structure such as a cell culturing film, a moth eye film, a micro-needle array, and a polarization film, or as an etching mask for forming a fine concave pattern on a substrate by etching. Therefore, in such a resin pattern, the fine convex pattern is required to be provided in a protruding condition substantially perpendicular to the resin pattern surface.
However, when the mold and the cured resin are separated in the nanoimprinting process, an in-plane force (tensile force), rather than only the force (tensile force) perpendicular to the resin pattern surface, is also applied to the fine convex pattern. As a result the fine convex pattern can tumble. For example, in a case where a mold or a resin as a transfer object is constituted by a material exhibiting flexibility or in a case where a fine convex pattern is formed on a long transfer object material by pressing a rotating mold, which is formed with a fine concave pattern on the surface of a belt imprint mold or a roller, against the long transfer object material, which is delivered in a predetermined direction, a force applied to the fine convex pattern in the in-plane direction becomes great, whereby the degree of inclination of the fine convex pattern becomes too great.
When such tumbling of the fine convex pattern occurs, the desired product cannot be obtained and the production yield is decreased. Since a demand arose for additional size reduction and increase in aspect ratio of convex patterns in the field of the above-described fine processing technical fields, the problem of the tumbling fine convex pattern gained particular importance.
Accordingly, a technique has been suggested by which when a fine convex pattern of a predetermined shape (linear shape, cross-like shape, and the like) is to be formed by nanoimprinting, the direction (separation direction) in which the imprint mold is separated from the cured resin is controlled according to the configuration (shape and the like) of the fine convex pattern, thereby preventing the fine convex pattern from tumbling (defects such as curving)(see Patent Document 2 and the like).